Photo by Diane Bou KhalilU.S. Palestinian Community Network’s Souzan Naser on what people need to understand about the recent Israeli airstrikes in Palestine and how to help.
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Chicago is home to more than 85,000 Palestinians. As the Israeli attacks against Palestinians escalated this month, tens of thousands of people in Chicago gathered to voice their support for Palestinians.
On May 21, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire, pausing 11 days of violence in which Israeli airstrikes injured at least 1,900 Palestinians and killed 279 Palestinians, including 66 children, in Gaza. Eighteen hospitals and clinics, a media building and residential homes were also demolished in the Israeli attacks, according to the World Health Organization.
On May 21, Borderless Magazine’s Engagement Reporter Diane Bou Khalil spoke to Souzan Naser, a U.S. Palestinian Community Network member in Illinois and longtime organizer, about the ongoing Palestinian crisis.
“What we have seen in Palestine over the last 11 to 12 days and what we will continue to see, despite the ceasefire, is an extension and expansion of the Nakba [Arabic for catastrophe] when the state of Israel was founded in 1948,” said Naser. “That is when over 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 were expelled from their homes and forced into exile creating a refugee crisis, which has still not been resolved to this day.”
Watch Naser’s conversation with Bou Khalil below.
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